Walk Softly
by Cloverfield
Summary: Tomoyo had to wonder if Kurogane even knew how often he dreamed of the mage. Set during the Nihon arc. Remix fic. Oneshot. KuroFai.


**DISCLAIMER:** Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, while lovely, is not actually mine. It belongs to those dear, sweet, evil ladies of CLAMP; I'm just borrowing it for a time.

**PREFACE: **This was written for the kuroxfai comm's Remix Challenge over on lj a while back. I was assigned tarmachan as my remix author, and I've done a remix of their fic_ An Irreversible Step_- this is a prologue of sorts, taking place before the events of the fic and referencing a few things in it, and is told from Tomoyo's POV. Please go read it, and not just so you can understand what I'm referencing here :)

Uh. This is not an epicly long fic or even particularly plot-y; it's really quite short, and has a serious tone in places- sorry about that, but I hope you enjoy all the same :D

(Mad love goes to mikkeneko for organising the challenge in the first place!)

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Tomoyo had to wonder if Kurogane even knew how often he dreamed of the mage.

Because this was not the first time she had dreamed of Kurogane on his journey, not even the first time his dreams had called to her in her sleep, sending her tumbling down the dreamways to lose herself in the warp and weft of his subconscious thought; it was, however, the first time he had dreamed on the doorstep of death, and what she had felt then (the terror and anger and desperation and determination and a helpless kind of longing) had not been her own heart breaking, had been almost too much for her to bear even as she woke moments later safe in Shirasagi.

She was used to emotion spilling over from dreams. _Used to it._ That's what dreams were on their most basic level, really; everything the heart couldn't bear bottled up to pour out in the darkness behind one's eyes once sleep claimed them. But Kurogane… _well_. She'd never known a heart like his.

(She'd never found it particularly comfortable, walking in his dreams; there were too many sharp edges and brittle places where despair had scarred him, and she'd always had to be so very careful where she'd stepped else she wound him further. She'd never experienced such a wide spectrum of anger before either, anger at everything, all the worlds, each and every unfamiliar sky- but_especially_ the blue eyes and easy lying smile of a man she'd never met. That had been hard enough to deal with even before she realised what hating someone with such passion actually meant for Kurogane, and the blush that had coloured her cheeks at the first, searing stab of lust- oh, she'd felt embarrassed for _days_, and on behalf of someone who didn't even realise _why _they felt the way they did!)

It wasn't until she found herself looking down on the blood-flecked face of the crying magician kneeling by Kurogane's side, desperately trying to staunch his wounds, that she realised that first, blurred impression she had of him seen through Kurogane's eyes (rain, and white, and the easy, casual grace of a well-practiced liar; hair like yellow silk sunbleached and fraying, a mouth that spoke everything but the truth and blue, blue, _impossibly blue _eyes) could not prepare her for the reality of what this man was to her vassal, her bodyguard, her dear and dying friend.

The moment she reached out to him, curved her hand about his bruised cheek and forced that drowning, despairing eye to meet her own was when it hit her, really hit her, sunk into her bones with a swiftness and a surety that took her breath away. Because Fai was looking at her like a man lost, like a man broken, like a man whose heart had been stabbed and slit and scarred over so many times it didn't even bleed with every fresh wound; was, in fact, looking at her like a man who had had his mask ripped away and was gasping for breath even as the torn pieces were scattered on the wind, and one of his hands was fisted so tight in Kurogane's bloody coat she could almost hear the fabric screaming at the strain.

_He loves him_, thought Tomoyo, but what she said was "don't worry," and the choking noise Fai made somehow managed to convey disbelief and hope in one tangled sound as the coterie of masked servants she had brought with her swept Kurogane up and onto a stretcher; _ice blue silk_, was what she thought next, even as she took his hand and squeezed it tight, _yes, and an obi of black and white_.

"Kurogane will not die," said Tomoyo, priestess and princess both, and the words held all the gravity the Tsukuyomi could bring to bear. His fingers trembled in her grip. _A red ribbon, for blood, for sacrifice, for the ties that bind._

"How can you," and it wasn't a question, and he wasn't looking at her, was looking at the waiting litter and right through it, seeing nothing.

"Because he is Kurogane." And maybe that was all she needed to say, because Fai laughed, the sound broken and mostly a sob, but also healing too; he didn't fight being lead to the litter, and that single blue eye took on a depth of determination that told her she was right.

The next few weeks blurred into healing and magic and nights spent sewing by the flickering light of lanterns; she was tired and she was worried but most of all she was sure that what she thought of the two of them was truth. Every time Kurogane woke (and it was becoming more frequent now, colour returning to that familiar face and sentience to eyes that had been blurred and confused) he stayed awake a little longer, and the first name he spoke after hers was always the magician's, even if he did not remember it when sleep reclaimed him, and she didn't need to be a dreamseer anymore to know what he dreamed of.

So when he woke for the final time and told her what he had learned, and when Fai had (_finally_, the man all but sleeping outside his door until she made him rest) entered the room, she knew she'd made the right choice, because the significance of long draping sleeves and a red ribbon tying back soft pale hair would not be lost on Kurogane (red for blood, red for sacrifice, red for love and hitsuzen) even if his brain would probably take a few moments to catch up. Her ninja had just spent a long time trying to recover the ridiculous amount of blood he'd lost, after all; it wouldn't be fair not to cut him _some _slack for being slow on the uptake.

Their reunion was not what she had expected even so; there was a lot less kissing and a lot more punching, and the two of them stared at one another as though they were on the verge of violence- but then Kurogane grinned, and though it was sharp, it wasn't the killer's slasher smile she was used to, and there was a warmth in red eyes she'd never seen before. And Fai was smiling, blue eye bright with happiness, absolutely _aglow _with it- so maybe things were back to the way they were supposed to be for the two of them after all.

But then the atmosphere changed, their gazes locked, tension thick between them, and she knew that now was a good time to leave. She'd only ever felt electricity crackling in the air like that before a storm, and whatever was about to break between the two of them, it was _their _storm and not something she needed to witness.

The giggle building in her chest was only partially because she was being ignored even as she spoke louder and clearer with every passing moment, explaining when and where they were expected in the morning; it was mostly because when Kurogane had finally snapped his gaze away from the magician standing over him to snarl something incoherent, colour had ridden high in his face in a embarrassed flush and it was, quite simply, hilarious.

So she'd merely smiled and waved and bid them both farewell, feeling entirely (if a little mischievously so) justified in what _else _she'd left them both in the jumble of medicines and tinctures for Kurogane's wounds (with a label on it, just to be clear, and she'd giggled so hard writing out Kurogane's name it was a wonder the characters had been legible at all) and when Souma asked her what on earth had her smiling so later that evening, she couldn't help but laugh and tell her to wait and see what morning would bring.

* * *

**ENDNOTE:** The title for this comes from the saying "walk softly and leave nothing but footprints" which is mostly applied to wild places and how one should disturb them as little as possible; I've sort of taken this for Tomoyo's dreamwalking, and thought it fit with the theme of the first fic :)


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